Title: Alhambra

Author: Vinnie2757

Character(s): everyone

Pairing(s): USUK, with others being revealed as they go.

Genre: cardverse AU, romance, (misplaced) humour, adventure. Some supernatural horror in later chapters.

Rating: T

Warning(s): language, violence, sexual situations. Also; pirates.

Summary: The King of Spades has just been crowned, and his Queen fished out of the ocean. The Kingdom is happy. Safe. But that security is soon threatened by a power far beyond that of the old Clocks and the Fates.

A/N: Rewritten as of 12/jan/13!

Chapter One: Spades

Alhambra (n): A version of solitaire played with a king and an ace serving as foundations, built up by suit.

Spades (n): A trick-taking card game that can be played with a partnership or as a single "cut-throat". A descendant of Whist, the Spades suit is always the trump.

In 1194, the Solitaire War devastated the Four Kingdoms, ripping the monarchies to shreds and destroying economies that would take over a century to repair. The damage might not have been so severe had the Queens not been among the preliminary casualties. Even several generations later, no historian, gossip or courtier could say who dealt the first blow, nor which Queen was the first to fall, but the fact remained that without their Queens, the Kings had prolonged the war, driven only by the insanity which destroyed all unpaired minds.

A Pair was a Pair, and a King could not rule without a Queen beside him. Insanity had proven time and time again that it was perfectly capable of ripping at the very core of a King's being if deprived of his Queen.

After the Solitaire War had been called to a halt, all Kings and Queens dead, with the Aces ruling in their stead, an undesirable circumstance at best, the Jacks convened in the Kingdom of Hearts to discuss a treaty and draw up conventions of war that would be upheld for the rest of eternity.

The Queens were not to be attacked under any circumstances. Should one nation attack another's Queen, the remaining two nations would declare war. Queens, as a general law, could rule without their Kings, though they would need the firm hand of their Jacks to keep them focused. It was generally considered that Queens were insane to begin with, and had no need to lose their Pair before falling into madness.

Alfred Franklin Jones had been found by his predecessor in 1740 at age five. It had been a chance discovery as far as Alfred was concerned, but the King had taken it as an omen – not necessarily bad, he would say as he played a game of chess with the young heir early in the evening, but certainly a strong one – and adopted him straight away. It was his eyes, he'd say, and rub a thumb across Alfred's cheekbone, affectionate and fatherly in that distant way of his. They were the eyes of a Spades King.

But what if you're wrong?

Alfred had looked at his eyes once, and tried to see what was so Kingly about them. They were blue and kind of unfocused. Round and young and with thick eyelashes. They were king of girly eyes, really, but he had assurances from the Queen that they'd look dashing once he grew into them. As he got older, he realised that they were perhaps a shade too bright to be entirely natural, and once he got the corrective lenses he perhaps should have gotten a few years prior, they grew even brighter, to the point of creating light, rather than just reflecting it.

(On the day of Alfred's coronation, his pupils changed to the shape of a Spade, the way all Cards pupils did. It was the mark of a Card, and he knew, even as he adjusted to the sudden change in the shape, that he would never be able to doubt his legitimacy to the throne again.)

Being King had never really been something that Alfred aspired to be. A knight maybe, saving damsels and keeping the peace, a paragon of chivalry and swordsmanship, but not a King, and certainly not the King of Spades. But King he was to be, and there was as much use protesting it as there was trying to fly without the aid of a machine. Within a year of being adopted by the then-King and Queen, he had settled into his classes and his training, learnt to stand straight and not to address other courtiers as though they were the best of friends.

(That was a lesson that didn't really stick, admittedly, as Alfred was a friendly sort of boy, and made companions out of even the oldest of his predecessor's dignitaries. The friends he made in those early years were friends that would stay with him for the rest of his life, even if they were not physically there to keep him company.)

From the Queen, Alfred was taught poise and manners, carefully ironing out the creases in his accent and tightening the line of his shoulders until he looked every bit a King of Spades. Though at first uncomfortable, the standard of dress required of him soon became second nature, and tugging his clothes straight became an unconscious action rather than a tug from the Queen when he was least expecting it. Within years of his adoption into the court, there was little to nothing left of the young country boy he'd been.

Oh, he was indulged in his fancies, allowed to roam the fields and hide in the gardens, provided he kept his contingent of guards with him at all times. He gave them the slip often enough, but they were rather too good at their jobs and were quick to pick up his trail again. But as his lessons became more and more important, as his predecessor's death came closer and closer, so his flights of fancy fell into the back of his mind. When he was being taught how to run a kingdom with tactics and swordsmanship and hours upon hours of lectures about history and politics and the other Kingdoms, there was little time left for frivolity.

The only upside was that there was no mathematics.

His lessons, of course, were not just to help him to become a better King. They were to help him become a better man, too. Not long after his thirteenth birthday, the King's physician took him to one side and spent a day talking him through several things that sounded entirely too disgusting to contemplate.

I'll fall in love with whoever I fall in love with, thank you very much. When I need help with that, I'll come find you. Until then, don't keep going on about it; that's really creepy.

As he got older and free time became something more of a luxury, he found himself taking refuge into a dusty, quiet corner of the library, curled in a pile of blankets, hidden behind a carefully-arranged stack of books, either drowsing or reading old fairy tales, stories he could hear in his mother's voice. Once or twice, he tried his hand at practicing the piano in the music room, but barely managed to play simple scales before deciding that his were not a pianist's hands. During warmer months, he would take to the practice field, practice his swordsmanship until he was soaked through with sweat, until every muscle ached and he was covered in nicks and bruises, aching and burning with exhaustion.

By the time he was to take the throne, he had already bested the House of Spades champions, and had bested one of the champions of the House of Hearts too. He had also been responsible for several serious injuries of his guard, but that was another matter, and not really his fault.

When he was sixteen, the King introduced Alfred to the pirates. They were a constant of all of the Four Kingdoms, and it was only appropriate that Alfred understood best how to deal with them. The King had set up a barter system, he explained as they stood on the pier and looked out over the sea. Their guards stood ready, but there were no boats in sight. He would leave the pirates be, not try to arrest them or fight with them as long as they conducted their thievery and murder elsewhere. If they let the Kingdom of Spades be, he would be willing to trade with them. It was a system that worked out well with the older pirates, though some of the newer vessels seemed a little unaware of what betrayal of that trust meant. Alfred thought it was a little too far on the side of injustice for his liking, letting murderers and thieves roam free as long as they left the Kingdom of Spades alone, putting more pressure on the other Kingdoms, but later, he would find that of all the choices presented to him, bartering with the pirates was the safest.

Having a Queen familiar with them also helped, he'd find.

When Alfred reached eighteen turns, the King died. Whether this was coincidence or fate, Alfred never found out. After the traditional week of mourning, the crown was placed upon his head and he was coroneted, the one-hundred-and-eighteenth King of Spades. Not the youngest by any means, but young enough that all the preparation in the world left him ill-equipped. He vowed to do his best, but even as he raised his chin and enunciated each word carefully, spoke to his Kingdom for the first time, his stomach churned, ears ringing.

He was far too aware that he was going to make a mistake. His prayers that night were the first for many years, but they went to whatever God existed, and begged that the mistake he made would not be damning to his people. He meant them no harm and wanted no harm to come upon them.

I will do whatever it takes to repair any damage I make, but I beg you that my people are safe.

A week after his coronation – the first few days having been spent on his knees in front of the toilet bowl – Yao came to drag him from his chambers.

'I don't believe I have offered you congratulations on being coroneted, My King,' the Jack said as they walked through the corridors and down into the dungeons. 'It is good to see you on the throne, and on your feet too.'

Alfred rolled his eyes. 'I ate too much.'

'You didn't eat enough,' Yao corrected, and turned a sharp corner.

In one of the cells, someone was whistling, but the Jack ignored it and led his King to the end of the row. The dungeons were a dank, dark place, little natural light filtering in through the glassless windows barely four inches tall at the very top of the walls. Alfred paused for a moment, and stared up at those windows; if there was heavy rainfall, the dungeons would flood. Most of the cells were empty, which was good, Alfred thought. He intended to keep the cells empty; not through executions, no, that wasn't in him. Nor through lenience; crimes were crimes no matter what and must be punished. But he hoped that he could make the crime rate low, keep the people out of prison and with their friends and family where they belonged. He hoped he could keep his people happy.

'My King?'

'Yes, coming.' He looked away and lengthened his stride to catch up to the Jack.

Every cell that Alfred passed was empty, door unlocked and unused for some time. All except the last. There was a huddle of dark cloth in one corner, chains attached to the wall, shackles around a pair of boots. Messy hair and the glint of gold catching on the sunlight filtering over Alfred's shoulders. It took a moment to find the body in those clothes, but find it he did, and then confusion settled. The man appeared to be asleep, leaning back against the wall with his arms folded and head lowered, but Alfred wasn't sure of that.

'Yao?' he asked, looking across at his Jack with a raised eyebrow.

Only one sort of person in the world would have epaulets and be in the dungeons.

When the man looked up, it was with a dark little smirk curling his lip. His eyes were glowing, a very familiar glow, one Alfred saw every time he caught sight of his reflection. The man looked between his two visitors with amusement, snide and black though it was, curling his mouth into a sneer, canines bared and eyes lidded. He didn't say a word and didn't take his eyes off them.

'My King,' Yao said, and gestured. 'Meet Arthur Kirkland. The Queen of Spades.'

Arthur was sharp. Sharp of body and of mind both, Alfred studied him carefully for the next few hours, watching the way he moved, from his stride to the clench of his fingers to the way his hair flopped as he threw himself into a chair.

His eyes were the sharpest part of him, except for perhaps his tongue, or maybe his elbows. A limey sort of green, with the trademark Spades pupils, they never once met Alfred's, and yet they never seemed to leave them. Taking in everything around him, Arthur gave off the impression of being a very observant type. Alfred wondered if he was planning on escaping. It seemed likely, in a way. Why, after all, would a pirate want to be in the Spades Palace when he clearly willed the opposite? There was no doubt, as Alfred watched his Queen stretching out aching limbs, that if he was given even a quarter of a chance, Arthur would bolt.

For all the time Arthur spent at sea, he was remarkably well-built. Though, Alfred supposed, watching the pull of his shirt as the Queen stretched his arms out, it would be all the exercise from pirating. All the raising-the-sails and sword-fighting and that, it was bound to put some muscle on you. But he hadn't been eating right, that was for sure. He'd never seen someone have such a good muscle structure as Arthur did and yet be so skinny at the same time. It didn't seem real. Then again, Alfred had a very sheltered upbringing, in comparison to the education he might have received had his future lain still in the lower town. He had eaten well and grown well, and that the two might not go as hand-in-hand as he had personally experienced seemed a little beyond him.

With the current sharpness to his features; starved cheekbones and protruding joints, he was about as attractive as desperation, but with a healthier diet, with some meat and bread, he could become rather handsome.

Well. If he did something about those eyebrows of his, anyway.

'Stop starin',' Arthur groused, and for a second, Alfred was sure his gaze had finally, finally met his own, but then the shorter man was paying attention to other things and the King couldn't be sure he'd even seen it.

'I'm not staring.'

'Aye. You are.'

Alfred pouted, but it either didn't work on a seasoned pirate, or said pirate failed to see it, because it elicited no reaction, and Arthur's attention shifted again, this time turning, with some interest, to his nails.

They were pretty filthy nails.

Most of him was pretty filthy.

'You should take a bath.'

Arthur's eyes rolled heavenward.

'Could you do me a favour?' When Alfred asked what, Arthur told him, 'Please shut up.'

Alfred stared at him then, lowering his chin but raising his eyebrow, and it gave him a look far too impertinent for Arthur's tastes. Whether Alfred knew what the droll look he received in response was for, Arthur didn't know. Nor, particularly, did he find it in him to care. All he wanted, really, was some peace and quiet, to just.

To just.

Well, to just get over it.

He was Queen of Spades. He'd known it for as long as he could remember – before then, even – and there was precisely jack shit he could do about it.

Oh, woe! The Queen of Spades was familiar with the language of the sea and her sailors!

Of course he was, he was a pirate. It came with the job. Or the hobby, at least, because it wasn't as if piracy paid regularly and uniformly. You got what you could steal and not a penny more.

It doesn't occur to Arthur that he's saying most of this out loud, but not enough to make any logical sense. Rambling about the sea, Alfred will learn, and rambling about the prejudices inherent in a system bound to land, are very much Arthur's forte, and he will talk for hours about both topics until he has neither breath nor energy to continue.

It's a shame that Alfred will, for the most part, enjoy being talked to about Arthur's life.

Being friends, at the least, will make ruling the Kingdom easier.

Probably.

(She'd said, from the moment they met, that his destiny lay in the hands of another and that his heart could never so truly be hers. He'd hurried to disagree, of course, but she was right. Looking at the King sitting opposite him across a table four feet wide and twenty long, which was, he'd learnt, one of the smaller dining tables, in a more private room for the Cards to take their meals, he could see it. It had, and would always remain, inevitable.)

''Scuse us,' Arthur grunted, and shoved away from the table.

Alfred stared at him, confused, but didn't follow. Good. It wasn't as though Arthur wanted his – his – husband to see him vomit into a toilet bowl.

The plumbing of Spades Palace would forever confuse him, and it took three attempts before Arthur learnt how to actually flush the toilet. It was obvious, once he'd worked it out, and it embarrassed him that it took those three attempts.

He suspected, as he washed his hands and rinsed his mouth out, that that was precisely why he was grateful for having been alone. Turning to leave, he set eyes on the bath, and a magnificent thing it was too.

It couldn't hurt, could it? Surely, as Queen (or at least, the Queen-to-be) he was entitled to take a bath as he chose? And the smell of the sea so heavily ingrained into his skin, salt in every crease and pore, soaked into all the gaping scars like new flesh, it hurt, reminded him of all those years he had spent out there, and all the years he would lose.

Best to get rid of it before he longed too badly for it that he thought to seek its cold embrace out once more.

The need to be breathing sea air aside, the dungeons did smell rather rancid, and he'd always prided himself on keeping a healthy, clean body. Pirates had such a reputation and he'd sought to somehow, somewhat ineffectually, to change that. Men without wives were not wont to bathe themselves with any sense of regularity, so he'd given up trying to make his crew follow his example fairly quickly. Not much pride could be found in having streaks of mud, dust and things only the Devil himself could possibly identify all over his clothes and skin, of course, and he'd be damned before he let himself remain in this state if he could rectify it.

'Oh, face it, Kirkland,' he huffed as he went to the door to find a maid to help him with filling the tub, having no clue as to how the water worked nor any clothes to wear post-scrub. 'You're a nancy boy who likes baths like any woman.'

Eventually, he tracked down a maid who blushed and fumbled with the sheets of the bed she was making (his bed, he learnt later), and nodded enough that Arthur felt inclined to raise his eyebrows in disbelief.

'You're goin' t' lose your hair if you keep that up,' he told her, and lingered by the door as she hurriedly reset her very practical, and rather fetching pleat before fetching him some clean clothes from a dresser at the far side of the room.

'I'm sorry,' she said as she led him back down the corridor towards the bathroom. 'We all, um. We thought.'

'That I was goin' t' be a woman?'

She nodded, ears and cheeks red.

'I'm sorry,' she repeated, and Arthur snorted.

'Nowt t' apologise for,' he said, and ruffled his hair. More dust than necessary fell out of it and coated his shoulders. 'It's understandable.'

He watched the maid draw his bath, made careful note of which salts she used, and which soaps and towels she laid out, and more importantly, where she obtained them from. That was more important than anything. He'd use what he liked, thank you, but that would be difficult if he didn't know where to get it from.

When the bath was drawn and the maid had left with Arthur's thanks, he stripped off, folded his clothes and set them to one side and climbed into the bath.

Alfred was bored. He'd grown bored a long time ago, but Yao made him at least pretend to be patient. After all, Arthur had just been ripped from an old life, been in the dungeons (though Alfred wasn't entirely sure why), and been forced into what amounted to servitude. He deserved some time alone. Eventually, though, the Jack grew tired of Alfred's endless pacing and nail-biting and other such tics, and sent him off to go and find him.

He's your Queen, and therefore your responsibility. It's not as though you won't see him naked at a later date, anyway, stop your fussing.

He caught a maid in one of the corridors and she told him that the last she'd seen of him, the Queen had been in the bath in the west wing, near their chambers. She said that he'd been in there for a while, but he'd been looking tired, perhaps he'd fallen asleep. Alfred thanked her and headed towards the appropriate bathroom. Once there, he rapped on the door, but received no reply.

'Arthur, are you in there?'

He cracked the door open a little and found that yes, the pirate was in there, and yes, he'd fallen asleep in the bath. Alfred stood there for a moment watching him before slipping inside and shutting the door to preserve the warmth.

Alfred hadn't been wrong in saying that Arthur needed feeding up. He was much too slender, all angles and bones, rough patches at his joints and old injuries bruising otherwise pale skin. Reclined in the tub the way he was, arms hooked over the sides and head back, it stretched him too thin; ribs and throat and the dark shadow of hair under his arms. He needed a better shave than whatever he'd been given in the dungeons – Alfred wasn't stupid enough to think they hadn't cleaned Arthur up before they'd been introduced – the shadows and rough patches on his jaw and the outside of his throat didn't fit him.

He lingered a little out of arm's reach, looking at the way Arthur's hair was curling at the nape of his neck, the gentle rise and fall of his chest, the sheer length of his arms, spindly but strong, undeniably strong. Arthur was a touch on the short side of average, and Alfred the same on the taller end, putting almost a head between them. But what Arthur didn't have in height, he had in length, all long lines that seemed disproportionate to his body, and yet fitting, somehow.

(Alfred thought back to those lessons on the thirteenth turn of his Clock, and his lip curled.)

It was funny but Alfred found that he didn't really want to wake him, content in the quiet. Rest would go a long way to making a man stronger, and he didn't want to interrupt that. Still, cold water would do Arthur no favours, so he crept across the tiles to carefully touch the pirate's wrist.

He hadn't even touched him before Arthur slurred, 'Leave it,' at him.

'The bath's cold,' Alfred told him. 'You'll catch a chill.'

''M a pirate,' Arthur reminded him as though that meant anything, still groggy, but he sat a little straighter anyway. The water sloshed as he brought bony knees up and a resounding crack made the hair on the back of Alfred's neck stand on end when Arthur stretched his own.

'Crick?' Alfred asked, and grinned when Arthur grumbled under his breath, rubbing at the mark the edge of the tub had left on his skin. 'Serves you right.'

'Sod off,' Arthur groused. ''S been a rough week. Nice bath like this, 's not my fault.'

'Best make sure the maids know to wake you then!' Alfred quipped, slipping out of reach before Arthur thought to hit him. 'Go to sleep in a bed here and you won't wake up for a day! That means they're really comfortable, by the way – a lot more than the bath.'

'I got that, ta,' Arthur replied, finally opening his eyes to shoot the King a droll look, sleepy-eyed with one brow raised and lips parted. Terribly chapped lips, to be sure, and Alfred wondered if it was the sea air or biting. 'Was there any particular reason y' came in 'ere, or was it jus' t' ogle?'

His eyes snap away from his Queen's lips.

'I'm not ogling.' But he said it too fast, and Arthur snorted with laughter, shifted his grip on the tub, and made to haul himself out of the bath. 'Hey! Have some decency!'

As it turned out, decency had nothing to do with it. Arthur's legs, having been in cold water for upwards of an hour, had gone to sleep and refused to carry his weight, leading him to flop back into the bath and splash water over the lip of the tub. Flushing with embarrassment, the pirate cursed up a storm that befitted his naval history, and ordered Alfred out of the bathroom so he could embarrass himself in private.

Alfred waited patiently outside of the door, where Arthur eventually emerged wearing close-fitting breeches with long boots and a loose shirt held close to his body with trouser braces of a brilliant shade of blue – the Spades blue. Rolling his shoulders, and then his eyes, Arthur strolled off down the corridor, completely ignoring Alfred, who, wrinkling his nose, hurried off after him.

'Wasn't there a waistcoat?' Alfred asked, falling into step beside the shorter man, nose still wrinkled in distaste at the indecency of Arthur's dress. The curls at the back of his neck were still dripping, and it was making his shirt cling.

'Aye. Not a fan of 'em.'

'But they're a part of your state robes!'

Arthur didn't seem to be fazed at all.

'Aye,' he agreed, amiable and ambling along as though he had not a care in the world, 'But I'm not in 'em now, am I?'

'Well, no.'

'There y' are, then. Now, where're the doors, I want to go out.'

Out, Alfred learnt, meant that Arthur very much desired to be on his own, and there was nothing anyone could say or do to stop him. Giving Alfred the slip was harder than the guards, because Alfred was lighter than they were, with their armour and their shields, but Arthur was lighter still, and weighing so little that you could step over the underbrush without disturbing it certainly made things easier to escape the blundering fool masquerading as King of Spades.

God forbid they should ever have to go on a hunt. Alfred would scare the game from a mile away.

(It would be the first thing the King of Diamonds suggested, a hunt amongst Kings. Arthur would laugh at him until he was forced to excuse himself to choking on his tea.)

There was a lake, far out in the gardens, where garden bordered wilderness, and Arthur hadn't been in Spades for so long that he'd almost forgotten where the boundaries lay. If Alfred had the brains, he'd realise that he could simply follow the edge of the lake and eventually come across him, but for now Arthur had abandoned him so far back in the woodland that he could only hear the ebb of the water as the fish moved beneath its surface and the occasional rustle of something in the trees behind him.

Oh, but he missed the sea so much already, missed the tang of salt in the air. Here, all there was to smell was dew and peat, and it was much too sweet in comparison. It was a pleasant enough smell, tinged with lily and lavender, but Arthur was a very bitter man who adored very bitter smells, and the pleasantness of flowers and nature made him sick to his stomach.

(The sickness did not include the memories.)

The lake had a little pier built out from it, rotting from lack of use over a dozen years, and Arthur made a note, as he climbed up onto it and felt each board creak and moan under his feet, to get it replaced. Maybe they could get a little boat down here, the lake was big enough for a little rowboat, a two-man thing, because undoubtedly Alfred would insist upon accompanying him. That would make him happy.

The boat, not having Alfred at his side all the time.

He was still standing on that pier three hours later when Alfred eventually found him again.

'Arthur!' he huffed from the shoreline, and the called man didn't need to turn to see his King hesitating at the shoreline. 'Is that safe?'

'No more dangerous than getting out of bed in the morning, I'm sure.'

But the boards had begun creaking more and more with every shift of his weight, so Arthur reluctantly turned and stepped gingerly back onto mostly-dry land. The moss squelched underfoot and made Arthur wrinkle his nose, curl his toes inside his boots.

'Yao was looking for you,' Alfred said, still looking suspiciously at the pier. 'He wanted to get down to business. Run over your duties with you, that sort of thing.'

'I'm sure he was,' Arthur hummed. 'I assume you gave up looking for me, and went back?'

'No,' Alfred hummed in response, fiddling with the button of his coat sleeve. 'He sent a runner down to find me.'

'Oh.'

As they were walking back to the palace, Alfred said, 'You really like water, don't you?'

'Born on it. Raised on it. Planned to die on it. Almost did.'

More than once, admittedly, but Alfred was green enough.

'I don't like water,' the boy said, as though Arthur cared. 'It's sad.'

'Sad? How so?'

Alfred kicked at a stone. 'Because it's – it's hard to explain.'

'Try.'

There was silence for a while as Alfred thought it over and then he eventually explained, in a hesitating, heavily punctuated ramble, that it was because the sea was ever changing, and people who left to go to the sea rarely came back, or did so but were so very different that he, Alfred, could hardly recognise them. He went on to explain that too many people died at sea, because she was capricious and cruel, and as much as he might want to know what was out there, it scared him. He fancied he could hear the wails of the sea-dead when the wind howled at night.

It made Arthur smile, but not respond.

How could he respond to that?

'I know it's silly,' Alfred said then, laughing a little, red in the ears. 'Only people with their Clocks stopped can hear the dead.'

Arthur still didn't reply, focused on the mud-streaked toes of his boots, as though they were the most interesting thing he had ever seen.

'You're not saying much.'

'Didn't think I needed to.'

'Oh, okay. You can talk whenever you want to. Need doesn't come into it. You're Queen; you can do what you want.'

Arthur smiled. 'I can go back to the sea? No, I thought not.'

Alfred mused on that for a while before noting that sometimes Arthur enunciated all of his words correctly and other times didn't.

'Bad habit.'

'It'll break,' Alfred assured him. 'We have an etiquette coach in the palace; he has to keep giving me enunciation lessons. I'm sure he'll get you talking proper soon.'

'Talking proper,' Arthur repeated, the bitterness of his smile turning to genuine amusement.

Alfred nudged him with an elbow and told him to shut up. Arthur just kept on smiling.

'Arthur?'

The Queen had found the library, retreated up there still in his shirt sleeves and muddy boots, and was now sitting in a comfortable armchair with a stack of books next to him. Yao was not entirely certain, as he paced down the aisle to him, that his Queen could even read at that level, let alone intend to do so. He knew Arthur was fond of books, but piracy didn't leave much time for reading.

'There are threats of assassinations,' the Jack said, and Arthur snorted.

'There are always threats. I suppose you intend to ask me to watch Alfred's back any time I'm in a position to do so?'

'And to watch your own besides,' Yao agreed. 'I mean it,' he huffed, when Arthur laughed. 'The boy's only been on the throne a week, and the other Houses are coming to congratulate him and start signing agreements in two days. There are people out there who are willing to pay to see him and the other Suits dead.'

'Then make sure it doesn't happen. You have eyes and ears all over the kingdom. This country is riddled with spies. Put them to work for once.'

'You have the best eyes and ears in the Kingdom, Arthur. You see and hear things no one else does.'

The book in Arthur's hands snapped shut at Yao's tone, and his eyes glared at it before turning upwards to look at the Jack.

'And why is that, do you think? My eyes and ears are none of your business.' He scoffed. 'Unless you're willing to pay to make them so.'

'You would see your own King dead?' Yao snapped, and Arthur leapt to his feet, throwing the book to the ground with a resonant slap of leather on wood.

'I would see the King burn,' he snarled. 'I did not ask for this, and I have wasted my life waiting for him. I lost everything.'

'You had nothing! Fate swore you to him from the very beginning, and she knew that. You lost nothing, because you had nothing.'

Yao knew, as the words fell between them and silence settled in their wake, that he had pushed too far. Though he had not seen Arthur since Alfred was a young boy, he remembered that anger, that silent rage, a tremor in his fingertips and a certain tightness in his jaw that gave him the darkest glare ever turned upon a member of the Spades Suit in centuries. Oh yes, Yao knew that anger, and made sure to step out of the way as Arthur stomped past.

There was no sense in following him, it would only get him a broken nose, so he let the Queen go and bent to pick up the book Arthur had thrown to the floor. As he straightened, dusting off the binding, he thought he heard someone tutting at him. It made something in his heart hurt, something he hadn't felt for a millennia and a half.

'Personal feelings can't interfere with his duties,' Yao murmured to that feeling, setting the book at the top of the pile by the chair, smoothing his hand over it. 'He knows that.'

There was no indication of acknowledgement from the feeling, so Yao let it be, turned and left the library, heading to Alfred's study to warn him to stay out Arthur's way a while so he could calm down in peace.

Arthur had never, in all his years upon the earth, liked having his flaws pointed out to him. Oh, he knew he had them, of course, because every man has his vice and a crack in his reflection.

He was, and always had been, a spider's web of cracks, a thousand pieces held together only by the frame of his skin and clothes. But there were scars in his skin, and tears in his clothes, rips in the seams and he was leaking out, bleeding and dying and slipping further and further into.

Into.

To be honest, he wasn't sure. Very few people had their Clocks stop at all, let alone live long enough to document the experience. The very thought of an unending existence, of never dying naturally, of never aging. It terrified people.

And yet Arthur survived, he lived and breathed and walked the earth and sailed the seas. Living was a term used only clinically; he didn't live. He survived. There was no joy in his life any more, not light or love or other such whimsical concept. He was an old man in an old world.

That had never been clearer than it had today. The world did not need him as much as Fate seemed to believe it did. Standing on the balcony of his chambers and watching the staff back-and-forthing as they readied the palace for sleep, it had never been more obvious.

He was a superfluous character, unnecessary and unneeded, and his role was purely, if the stories were to be believed, to stay Alfred's hand and keep it steady. To keep his mind intact. That was it. His sole purpose.

They said that the Queens were mad, that their insanity passed to their Kings should they fall to sickness, or to battle, or to any other cause, and he supposed there was some truth in the rumour. He was old enough now to recognise the signs of insanity that corded his fractured reflection. But that opened a whole other basket of cats, and he had no desire to examine himself further, so he turned away from the gardens, wild and untamed, wretched in their beauty, and to his turned-down bed.

Smiling, a little bitter, a little hurt, he stripped out of his clothes, folded them neatly and set them on a chair in the corner, and climbed in. It was too big for him alone, too big for just one man. It was a bed designed for two people, for a man and his wife, and his hand stretched across the empty space on the other side, lacking creases and folds where a body might lie, and fancied he could feel warmth under his fingertips.

++End Chapter++

A/N: Hey guess who's back! I felt the need to rewrite it to get a better feel for the story and to also incorporate later plot elements that need to be established earlier.

I have no idea how soon I'll be able to update because I have so much work to do you don't even know, but until then, have fun!

++Vince++